Jennifer > Recent Status Updates

"I then rejoiced that I was an Englishman, and glories in the name of Britain." John Adams, 1756. Not exactly a sentiment one expects to hear from one of the leaders of the American Revolution, and it's amazing how quickly things changed.

This quote from The New England Primer made me laugh: "He who never learns his ABC, forever will a blackhead be."

I was surprised that "A Spell for Hunger" didn't mention Erysichthon from Greek mythology, who was possessed by Famine as punishment for cutting down a tree sacred to Demeter. No matter how much he ate, he was always hungry. Edith Hamilton included it in her book, and I thought of it often when I had to take Depakote, a powerful anticonvulsant whose side effects include a ravenous appetite.

It's so strange now to think of the USS Constitution in combat, probably because of her historic value and because I've toured modern navy ships during fleet week. But of course she wasn't "historic" in 1804 and her purpose was to fight ships not all that much different than herself. And she is the only currently commissioned US surface ship to have sunk an enemy ship in time of war.

One thing the Chinese didn't invent and were mostly indifferent to was glass, which had profound implications chemistry in the region. Chemistry is so glassware-dependent that many university chemistry departments include at least one full-time glassblower to make specialized or even custom glassware for experiments. Less obviously, it also impacted biology, because the light microscope requires glass lenses.

"As long as every cranny was filled with oil to prevent bacterial growth, syrups of meat could last for years inside them in the arctic cold..." I wonder how they prevented botulism, caused by a strain that grows under anaerobic conditions and the reason I make infused vinegars bur not infused oils.

A recurring pet peeve - the phrase "AD 1000s" and others like it simply don't make sense. This is because "AD" stands for "anno domini" or "the year of the Lord" and there's no way a century or a millennium can be "in the year of" anything. I'm not even sure substituting "CE" would make it any better. Maybe "circa 1000" would be best.

"The monks at the priory shave tonsures into their hair to allow their God easy access to their souls." Not quite. The tonsure is symbolic - the baldness of slavery (to God) and the outer ring of hair of the crown of thorns. This is making me wonder about the rest of the fiction - unless this is thoroughly Ciaran's understanding of what the tonsure is and does.

"People in other parts of the world dined on mice, too. There's even a restaurant in China today that serves mouse steak, mouse bacon, and other cuts. Given how much time and precision it takes to butcher a mouse, it's expensive fare."

The idea of offal being more elite than muscle meat in the ancient Roman world is a strange one to me. Offal certainly doesn't seem elite now; I think of it as generally unattractive and what what poorer people might eat. Or, as a chef on a "Viewer's Choice" episode of "Chopped" said, "It's going to be offal, it's going to be awful."

"Rich [ancient Roman] households employed an ornitrix, a servant who specialized in hairdressing." Another awesome word.

"...ancient Rome's sewer system was superior to any other European city's before the 1700s."

"Clouds tend to drift fast over water and drag over land, so a traffic jam of clouds on the horizon could well mean land ho. Clouds can also dip downward toward land in certain conditions, as if draining into a funnel. Their colors can change subtly as well - gaining a green tint above lagoons or a pink hue above reefs."

"...shark flesh requires bleeding and soaking or it tastes of ammonia." This probably has to do with the fact that sharks use urea to maintain their osmotic balance against the ocean.

Trading about the ancient Egyptian use of meteoric iron is interesting - as is the fact that they seem to have believed the sky was iron and small bits of it fell off to make the meteors.

"Pyramidiot" is a beautiful term.

"...the popular image of those workers [who built the pyramids] - slaves driven by whips - is almost certainly wrong. Archeologists have uncovered graffiti from work crews chiseled into pyramid stones, messages declaring themselves the 'Vigorous Gang,' 'Enduring Gang,' and 'Khufu's Gang.' In other messages, crews brag about returning home 'in good spirits...as if it were the beautiful festival of a god.'

"We live far closer in time to Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ than either of them did to the construction of the first Egyptian pyramids in the 2600s BC." That's weird to think about.

"Hops never appeared in beer before the Middle Ages." Interesting, and I wonder what prompted people to start adding them.

"Swole" is an informal adjective meaning "extremely muscular."

"You can't understand an era anyway unless you grasp its food."

"Human colonization, then, was not one unbroken wave of expansion, but a series of fitful swells and retreats, especially with the last two continents to be populated, the Americas." A good thing to keep in mind.

Now, it is the party with the burden of proof that gets the last word.

"Neither he [John Adams] nor Abigail ever owned a slave..." Noted.

"Objections were rarely, if ever, raised." Now, objections must be raised so that they can be included in the record and argued on appeal. This is making me wonder how appeals worked back then, and how much has changed.

"...in England, defendants were not afforded the presumption of innocence; rather it was believed that an innocent man should be able to prove it." But starting in 1657, things were different in Massachusetts, when the general court had decreed that the presumption of innocence applied.

"The concept of a building dedicated solely to the law, a courthouse, was growing in America; in most towns and villages, trials and hearings were still held in town houses and taverns."